It’s a no-win situation for meliorists. If they align with them, they’re going to be suckered into a corporate “worse the better” strategy every time. It’s amoral collegiality, and it works. The only electoral beneficiary is the Republican Party. The rest of the victory, needless to say, stays with their sponsors.

A rosy pelican catches a fish in Delhi zoo. The 214-acre National Zoological Park is home to more than 2,000 species of animals and birds from Africa, America, Australia and Asia [Manan Vatsyayana/AFP/Getty Images]

***

I am still advocating for the little Capuchin monkey to take the WH Press Guy Job… with a series of pre-set signs. Add to the pile:

I think about the scheisse pile in Ft Hood what I think about a lot of erupting violent crime that needed to be assessed early, better managed before it blew, nipped in the famous bud stage, etc. (Garrido/Dugard and Sowell/many – and others)… it is allowed to fester. A stressed and distressed population is a goal. And if the festering, sucking air wounds blow big.. someone somewhere is happy.

A long term side goal, at least by some elements in the country, is and has been race war. Will it ever blow? I have no idea.

Oh, and pretzel? Well, he fails at CinC (I don’t agree with every observation, but with the thrust of the article). Just my opinion. Hell, so did George the Second — where to start! Bill was a mess. IMO the Democrats still pay for Clinton having picked Cohen, a Republican, as SecDef. I think the last credible one was, maybe!, Stansfield Turner.

George the First, practically a drooling lunatic. Sold to us, though, as ”Old Aristocracy” (don’t make me laugh too hard!).. and ”Old China Hand”. He served all of 10 months in China straddling iirc two calendar years – Babs and the kids in Manhattan, it was his life time with the CIA that commended him to the job. It came out in the 1992 election that, from his own mouth, there are three versions of his War Time Heroics. Enuf said.

Reagan, the tag end of decades as a costumed, Max Factor’d propaganda prop, happily drafted to the Hard Right Wars. One more paying gig. Sadly, with better managed Optics. And a chronically vigilant, protective wife (she served him well).

But who’s counting in a losing game.

It – being a credible, walk-on, run-way worthy CinC – is not even a consideration for the job … not anymore, not that I can see. I am not at all surprised that Gates has gotten his H1N1 vaccination (as if I care) but Pretzel and Wife have not — don’t care about that either, it’s the optics and what is revealed. (Or, so the publicly told tale goes…)

The whole of the press briefing today is not up yet at WH.gov, but here is the entry at Political Punch.

TAPPER: Kind of a — a theoretical question, but what — at what point does an attack become considered a terrorist attack, even — even if it’s a domestic terrorist attack?

GIBBS: I don’t know that I would have the theoretical background to — to answer that. I would pose that to somebody at — at the FBI. But, again, I don’t know that we’re at a point yet where we fully understand motive.

TAPPER: OK. In terms of the House health care reform bill, right now one of the big logjams, as you know, has to do with abortion language and also has to do with whether or not illegal immigrants, undocumented workers can have access to the health insurance exchanges. Those are both issues that you have said from this podium, I think, that should have been settled, theoretically, because you said that the bill the president signs will not fund abortions, I believe, and…

GIBBS: The president said that.

TAPPER: The president said that. And you’ve said that the bill the president signs will not — illegal immigrants will not have access to health care…

GIBBS: Well…

TAPPER: … the health insurance exchanges. So why are they still debating this on Capitol Hill if the president has made his position as to what he’s going to sign clear?

GIBBS: Congress, obviously, is working through a process that will ultimately, we believe, before the end of the year get a bill to the president’s desk. I think there are still discussions going on, on both of these two issues up on Capitol Hill. While the president would like it, tomorrow will not be the final vote on a bill coming to his desk, but he sees tomorrow as an important step forward. He’ll go to Capitol Hill tomorrow to advocate for continuing that progress and passing in the House of Representatives a bill.

TAPPER: Well, I guess the question is, the people who are — have the — have the — have the Democrats who are urging a different position from the one that you and the president have stated about what the president will sign, have they not gotten the message? Has the president not conveyed to them what he wants in the bill sufficiently?

GIBBS: Well, as you mentioned, the president’s been clear about what he said, and I think those that — that have a different viewpoint than what the president might have, on either side of the aisle, are best to speak to their motives.

hmm It occurred to me though that Maria and Arnold might want one so I thought I’d google up a fast article on the item… made by a Russian firm, Russo-Baltique.. (proceed to fret, we are being outdone in the gargantuan division – I say, thanks be to someone’s god!)

A Russian armoured-car builder is boasting that its latest vehicle has seats covered with “whale-penis leather”.

The €1 million ($1.6 million) Dartz Prombron Monaco Red Diamond Edition armoured car has been developed by the same company, RussoBaltique, that built armoured vehicles for Tsar Nicholas, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky.

On its official website, the company says the whale-penis leather is the same as that used by Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis on the yacht Christina O.

Onassis is rumoured to have had some of the barstools on the yacht, the world’s most expensive at the time, covered in the controversial leather. . . . . .

…it all seems so long ago, but we should be relieved there is continuum! Lest the firmament tear!

For those wondering just how may whales may need to be harvested to outfit the special edition, the answer is not many. The penis of the Blue Whale, for example, can grow up to 2.4 metres.

Maybe they should just ship a whole one, along with the … car. Tank. Whatever it is.

search

About...

An Opera Glasses and Popcorn view of Politics and the Assembled Multitude...

Marisacat -

- Real independent observations on current events with a particular fondness for the follies of the Big Box Blahgers.

Deflates bloated egos like a champion fencer in a balloon warehouse.

- Alan Smithee

Marisacat -

"...polish on a mud wallow"

- Meteor Blades [May 24 at Mcat]

Marisacat -

"... doyenne of donkle deconstruction"

- Who is IOZ [January 2 2007]

Marisacat -

"... hardened professionals and their primary strength lies in their being completely unconflicted."

"... the primary difference is that on the level of criticizing other blogs and bloggers, they can actually do some damage."

So.

At the age of 86, Noam Chomsky remains as active as ever in his work as a world-renowned political dissident and pioneering linguist. He has also opened a new chapter in his life, recently celebrating a one-year anniversary with his new wife, Valeria Wasserman Chomsky, his second marriage. Chomsky discusses the joys of newfound love and why it is a "pri […]

Noam Chomsky weighs in on the Black Lives Matter movement across the United States, calling it a response to the unresolved consequences of slavery and racism dating back hundreds of years. "[Slavery] is a large part of the basis for our wealth and privilege," Chomsky says. "Is there a slave museum in the United States? The first one is just b […]

Following its election in January on a pledge to confront the austerity program that's decimated Greece's economy, the Syriza government has faced a major pushback from international creditors led by Germany. Days after Greece secured a four-month extension to a loan package in exchange for new conditions on its spending, Noam Chomsky says the Euro […]

World-renowned political dissident, linguist and author Noam Chomsky discusses why National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden should be welcomed back to the United States as a hero and why those who authorized the government surveillance he exposed should be on trial, not him. Chomsky also argues that while mass surveillance has been ineffective i […]

The Islamic State might be the best-funded radical Islamist group, perhaps in history, but the coalition air campaign that’s targeting its oil-refining operations and military assets has begun to damage…Click to Continue »

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu implored Congress on Tuesday to reject a nuclear deal currently being negotiated with Iran, calling it a threat to the survival of Israel and its…Click to Continue »

As Republican lawmakers criticized Hillary Clinton Tuesday for using her personal email account to conduct government business at the State Department, the White House would not say whether the former…Click to Continue »

At the annual American-Israel Public Affairs Committee conference, speakers advanced Iran as an existential threat and sought to downplay differences between Israel and the US while demonstrators were arrested outside

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday the Senate would begin debate next week on a bill that would require President Barack Obama to submit any final nuclear deal with Iran for Congress' approval.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned the United States on Tuesday that it was negotiating a bad deal with Iran that could spark a "nuclear nightmare," drawing a rebuke from President Barack Obama and exposing a deepening U.S.-Israeli rift.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives approved full fiscal-year funding for the U.S. domestic security agency on Tuesday, dealing a blow to conservative Republicans who had wanted the bill to include language blocking President Barack Obama's recent executive orders on immigration.

Media

from Howl

I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

October 7 1955

"a remarkable collection of angelson one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure

Democrats…

Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.